1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to network privacy, and more particularly to a system and method for maintaining the privacy of institutional customers during network transactions.
2. Related Art
With the advent of the world wide web (i.e., the web) and Internet, the use of electronic commerce has exploded. In an effort to better market goods and services, technologies have been developed that track the patterns of individual consumers, or groups of consumers. Such information can be put to good use, namely by improving the quality of services, delivering differentiated services, improving customer retention, etc. Unfortunately, use of such technologies can also often result in personal information being unknowingly used, sold or otherwise disseminated, and may in most cases be considered a form of invasion of the consumers' privacy.
Accordingly, one of the challenges of this new type of commerce is to provide privacy protection to consumers who use services on the Internet. One solution is to implement technologies that will allow consumers to engage in electronic commerce with complete protection of privacy and/or even complete anonymity. However, there are some instances when complete privacy or anonymity between a consumer and an institution (e.g., a merchant, a service provider, a bank, etc.) is not practical. For instance, a bank may be legally obligated to know the identity of a consumer conducting transactions with the bank. In addition, a consumer may want a merchant to know his or her identity during a business transaction in order to streamline the process. In these cases, encryption techniques, such as public key infrastructure (PKI) can be utilized to ensure that the information being transferred remains secure against eavesdroppers.
A problem arises however in situations where institutions offer a combination of private services, such as on-line banking, and non-private or public services, such as shopping opportunities. For example, a merchant web page may include a web portal giving access to a variety of services and information delivered by the merchant or other parties. In such cases, the merchant has the ability to observe the interaction between the customer and the web pages accessed through the portal. Because the exact identity of the customer is known, the possibility exists of exploiting personal information, which may result in an invasion of the customer's privacy. Similar problems arise in the case of business customers. For instance, observation of the web behavior may allow one to guess the commercial strategy of a business customer.
To combat this potential exploitation, some companies have adopted strict policies that forbid themselves from observing their customers' web behavior. It is however important to recognize that tracking the overall trends of consumers not only helps the merchant improve their business, but it also helps the customer to be better served. Accordingly, the ability to gather and utilize business intelligence helps commercial efficiency. Thus, there exists a need to provide capabilities for gathering business intelligence on the Internet while protecting the privacy of consumers, particularly in the case where the consumer's identity is known to the institution providing goods and/or services.